“Angles”
The Strokes
RCA
Rock ’n’ roll made a comeback in 2001, replacing the bubbly pop songs of the late 1990s with something louder, dirtier and more dangerous.
No band better represented this new wave of music than the Strokes, four leather-clad New Yorkers who looked like the Ramones’ handsome offspring and sounded like a reincarnated Velvet Underground.
The Strokes wrote songs about big city life and young adulthood, scoring the soundtrack for a generation of listeners who’d outgrown their Britney Spears records and begun to crave something edgier. Then, after releasing three albums in five years, the band disappeared.
“Angles” is the Strokes’ first release in half a decade, and much has changed in the interim. Several band members have launched solo careers. Pop music has returned with a vengeance. The college students who blasted the group’s debut album in 2001 have graduated and grown up.
Combined, these facts raise the stakes for the new release: If “Angles” flops, the Strokes could be over.
There’s good news. “Angles” has enough scattered highlights to avoid flop territory, and although its 34-minute running time is reminiscent of the band’s early albums, the Strokes rarely rest on their laurels.
“I’ve been out around this town,” Julian Casablancas sings in a gritty croon during “Under Cover of Darkness,” the first single, “[and] everybody’s singing the same song for 10 years.” With those words serving as the album’s mantra, “Angles” ventures far beyond the modernized garage rock that launched the Strokes’ career.
During the album’s faster moments, the band leans heavily on the guitar interplay of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., who pepper songs like “Taken for a Fool” with crisp, brittle riffs. There’s a lighter element to “Angles,” though, with New Wave keyboards and ’80s production splashed across several songs like paint.
Casablancas croons and hiccups like a young Ric Ocasek on “Two Kinds of Territory,” which evokes the Cars with deadly accuracy. On “Gratisfaction,” the group reaches back even further, borrowing the descending verse of Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years” and setting it against a power-pop backdrop.
The band’s influences may be evident, but they’re assimilated into the songs with sly finesse. Few songs reach so far beyond the Strokes’ rock ’n’ roll bedrock that they sound downright shocking, and even fewer are mere retreads of the band’s original sound. In short, the group widens its wheelhouse without alienating its returning audience. However, “Angles” never burns as brightly as 2001’s “Is This It,” whose 11 songs helped kick-start an entire genre of millennial music.
This is the Strokes’ curse. They were deemed leaders of a rock revolution before they’d had time to settle on a sound, and any move away from their early albums will always run the risk of sounding like a step backward.
Hey Monday hits prime time
When it comes to promoting music, Hey Monday is no slouch. The pop band played 133 shows last year, traveling more than 50,000 miles in the process.
Despite the heavy touring, the group hit a promotional peak on March 15, when Hey Monday’s current single, “Candles,” was performed on the Fox TV show “Glee” by several cast members. More than 10 million viewers tuned in.
“To watch someone else sing our song, especially on that level … it was amazing,” says vocalist Cassadee Pope.
“People who didn’t know us before the show are saying nice things to me on Twitter. There’s been a lot of movement on iTunes. It’s nuts to see how one show can make such an impact.” Digital sales of “Candles” have surged since the episode. Hey Monday’s debut album, “Hold on Tight,” and 2010 EP, “Beneath It All,” have also received boosts on iTunes.
Viral song becomes genuine hit
It’s been a busy month for Rebecca Black. “Friday,” the teenager’s first single, was uploaded to YouTube on February 10. Since then, the music video has skyrocketed to Internet infamy, gaining more than 17 million YouTube views in the past two weeks alone.
The song is now available on iTunes, where it’s been charting well since its March 14 release.
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